"A senior OpenBSD developer has complained on a mailing list that upstream vendors of free and open source software are adding in changes without any thought of whether downstream users could adapt to the change. Marc Espie said this would hurt smaller players by not allowing them to keep up with the changes. Basically what is happening is that numerous changes are being made to Linux and smaller projects like OpenBSD cannot keep up with the changes. And, according to Espie, not all these changes are strictly necessary."

"Over the years I've heard a few complaints like this and it's totally valid. It's getting worse each year.

But in the end I don't care for the BSD licence or BSD distros/software and it seems a lot of other people feel the same way. Unless I start an ISP I probably won't ever have to use it professionally.

I hear the license argument used a lot as reasons not to use *BSD and quite frankly I think it's a dumb reason.

BSD doesn't impose any restrictions on the way you use your software. It doesn't affect the quality of the software itself. The only possible reason to dislike *BSD because of the software license is if you're a narrow-minded elitist that would sooner attack fellow open-source advocates for being different than learn and embrace other technologies.

Hell, why don't we all just stop using Apache because it's not GPL? Or Firefox because it's MPL? Or even Xorg because it's MIT? There's a whole tone of software you run on Linux that isn't GPL, so this whole GNU / GPL elitism that many have is just retarded. "

Ahhh, WRONG! The reason why the GPL is popular is that many of the developers in open source are now paid by corporations. These corporations want some kind of assurance that the hard work they are paying for isn't going to be plundered by a competitor and stuffed into a close source project. It has nothing to do with elitism and everything to do with business.

EDIT: Thats not to say that many volunteers don't feel the same way. Its the reason why the GPL is the way it is and why Linux isn't under the BSD license.

Ahhh, WRONG! The reason why the GPL is popular is that many of the developers in open source are now paid by corporations. These corporations want some kind of assurance that the hard work they are paying for isn't going to be plundered by a competitor and stuffed into a close source project. It has nothing to do with elitism and everything to do with business.

Again, that doesn't have any impact on using the software what so ever.

If you're a developer, then choosing which licence to release your code as and what projects to work in is very important. But we're talking about reasons not to run a piece of software - not develop for.

Furthermore, if you really cared about the developers work being rewarded, then you wouldn't boycott *BSD just because of it's license - because that's essentially just wasting the developers time.

And lastly, if you really stood by your principles you wouldn't use Firefox, Apache, Xorg nor any of the other non-GPL software on Linux. So all this "I only use GPL" and the boycotting of *BSD because of it's licence, when MIT is almost identical and essential to Linux desktops, is pure hypocrisy.

Sorry if this comes across aggressive, but it really winds my up that the hard work of BSD developers is effectively rubbished by the non-developer Linux community simply because a few zealots don't like the fact that BSD allows corporations not to contribute back to the original source. Something that makes absolutely no difference to the software from a users perspective.

Furthermore, if you really cared about the developers work being rewarded, then you wouldn't boycott *BSD just because of it's license - because that's essentially just wasting the developers time.

No boycott of BSD has been mentioned. Choosing to use programs that happen not to be BSD is not boycotting. The article only goes as far as to mention "laziness".

And lastly, if you really stood by your principles you wouldn't use Firefox, Apache, Xorg nor any of the other non-GPL software on Linux. So all this "I only use GPL" and the boycotting of *BSD because of it's licence, when MIT is almost identical and essential to Linux desktops, is pure hypocrisy.

Did you stop and think for a minute that the fact that "GPL people" do use Firefox, Apache and Xorg is because it is a matter of pragmatism and not principle? Again, no boycotting is happening on the GPL side.

Sorry if this comes across aggressive, but it really winds my up that the hard work of BSD developers is effectively rubbished by the non-developer Linux community simply because a few zealots

As we established, the fact that "GPL people" often use non-GPL software on their systems liberally because of pragmatic concerns is the very opposite of zealotry.